He doesn’t even know my name.
Because you refused to tell him, you idiot. Because holding back that one part of myself seemed like the only card I had to play, the rest of the deck stacked against me.
Loneliness wraps its fingers around my neck and squeezes until I’m choking. Tears burn my cheeks. I’m crying in huge heaves, eyes squeezed shut, knees to my chest, arms wrapped around my legs in a pathetic attempt to keep myself in one piece.
“My name is Sera,” I whisper through sobs. That’s who I used to be before everything I knew was taken from me. Before my family became my number one enemy, before I stopped recognizing myself. Before I became so alone. “Sera, Sera, Sera,” I chant, sobs getting louder, messier. “I just want to go back to being Sera.”
“Sera?” Alik’s voice is back inside my skull, just like in my dreams. Comfort and temptation twisted up in each other.
My name is Sera. I can’t tell if I say it out loud or in my head. The only thing I know for certain is that I can feel Alik close by—so close—and I’m torn between hating him and wanting him to never leave me alone again.
“Is that your name?”
I open swollen eyes, tears still free-falling. Alik is kneeling on the floor in front of me, his hands restless on his thighs. I wait for him to ask me what’s wrong. To demand I repeat my name. To scold me for the things I keep doing wrong.
I could handle any of those. Would know how to respond to any of those.
Instead, Alik brushes hair off my damp cheek and does the one thing no one has done in as long as I can remember. He asks, “Are you okay?”
The question is genuine, his concern palpable. I’m a human being in his eyes. Someone worth noticing, worth acknowledging. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, I swear Alikactually seesme, and all the attraction I’d banished comes back in a rush. “What did you say?”
Alik’s hand slides to the base of my skull, his palm cradling me so easily. “I asked if you’re okay.”
I wrap my fingers around his forearm, lean forward and whisper, “That’s what I thought.” Then I shock the hell out of us both and kiss him.
12
ALIK
She tastes of salt. And anger, and something so much more complex I can’t stop myself from pulling her closer. From licking the seam of her lips.
Marya—Sera?—stiffens at the contact. I expect her to pull away.
I definitely don’t expect her to return the favor, but that’s exactly what she does. And more.
Moaning softly, she kisses me harder, her lips parting, each sweep of her tongue a hit of dopamine to my system.
Kissing this woman is a bad idea. Criminally bad. Terminally bad. Bad in all the ways bad. But when she scrambles onto my lap, thighs spread around my hips, I forget all the reasons why I’mnotsupposed to be doing it and give in to the one reason I should: kissing her is absolutely fucking amazing.
The beast in my chest has been prowling non-stop for days, every encounter, every thought about this maddening woman making it—me—even more restless.
I went damn near ballistic when I thought someone had broken in here and hurt her.
I was blindsided—impressed and so fucking turned on—when she threatened to shoot me with my own gun.
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut when she told me that being locked in her room was triggering night terrors.
And I violated every traffic law imaginable getting back here when I saw her running herself ragged on the video feed.
This woman, no matter her name, is infuriating. And sexy. And, in this sliver of time, mine.
Hungry, I coax her lips open wider, seeking out her tongue. She welcomes me, drags me deeper, dueling for supremacy as the kiss gets hotter, more intense.
She’s pressed against me tits to hip, and the full-body contact is shredding any sense of self-preservation. She nips my lower lip. I feel the groan building in my chest, my hands mapping her back. The curve of her hips, the globes of her perfect ass.
One squeeze and she gasps my name, answering a craving I didn’t even know I had.
Pulse like a runaway train, I draw back until our lips are barely touching. Use my grip to calm the erratic rhythm of her hips. Wait for her dazed eyes to meet mine. “Sera?”